Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"John Howard’s recent comments concerning the asylum seeker boat SIEV 4 that was central to the ‘children overboard’ senate inquiry are disappointing but not surprising. Falsely accused of throwing their children overboard, he maintains the boat passengers don’t deserve an apology as "they irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water", which is as untrue as the allegation that they threw their kids into the water. He has conveniently forgotten to mention that ADF personnel were under orders to override safety of life at sea conventions by delaying rescue until passengers of asylum seeker boats were in the water, rather than when it became apparent the boat was going to sink." Sue Hoffman

"Aborigines, like many indigenous peoples in the world, have become something akin to insects ‘pinned’ into a specimen box. The community at large feels ‘guilty’ about the fact that our ancestors conquered and dispossessed them and so we try to make amends by believing that the best thing we can do is ‘help’ them to hold on to their culture; to ‘pin’ them into a place that diminishes our guilt and supposedly helps to ‘right the wrongs’ of the past." Roslyn Ross

Al-Na'as is not the first academic to be killed in the mayhem of the "new Iraq". Hundreds of academics and scientists have met this fate since the March 2003 invasion. Baghdad universities alone have mourned the killing of over 80 members of staff. The minister of education stated recently that during 2005, 296 members of education staff were killed and 133 wounded. Not one of these crimes has been investigated by the occupation forces or the interim governments. There is now a systematic campaign to assassinate Iraqis who speak out against the occupation." Haifa Zangana

"In the United States, individual states that follow unsound fiscal policies face a penalty. Their bonds sell at a discount relative to those of better-managed individual states. The higher debt service they must pay serves – to some degree – as a form of discipline against the temptation to spend now and pay later." J Bradford Delong